More than 2000 were entered by 125 agencies and graphic design studios, 465 individual designers and 15 clients, and 964 posters made it through to the final round of the Vienna-based competition. In the true spirit of fairness which the organisers pride themselves upon, only two posters from Austria itself will appear in the 100-strong exhibition, along with 50 by Swiss designers and 48 from Germany.

The most popular graphic design competition in the German-speaking world, the formidable jury consisting of chairman Gunter Rambow (Germany) , Günter Eder (Vienna) and Megi Zumstein (Lucerne), is augmented by Barcelona and Berlin-based, British designer Patrick Thomas, and Latvian-born, Igor Gurovich, graphic designer and tutor at the National Design Institute (Moscow).

According to Rambow, who has been designing since 1960, is a former professor of graphic design at the University of Kassel and of Visual Communication at the Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe, and who regularly designs the posters for the Frankfurt Opera, the poster scene is on the move. New tendencies from youth culture are becoming visible, he says, and many graffiti sprayers have become designers. However, ‘Although they have always had intense competition, posters as images in public space will maintain their significance,’ he reassures us.

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‘Placed on a podium a group of fans will show their different states by performing a choreography blending colour and motion.’ Extracted from Eindhoven-based design studio Raw Color’s website, the text isn’t referring to a live piece of performance art enacted by their fans, as well it might be, but rather to an installation, The Fans (2014), at LYNfabrikken Box – Aarhus, Denmark in 2014, soon to be on show again during London Design Festival 2016.

This is a long way from standard design practice, but interdisciplinary Raw Power, run by Daniera ter Haar and Christoph Brach, have built their reputation on their individual approach. The new exhibition is intended to demonstrate the flow of ideas between the group’s self-initiated and commissioned work, that leads to innovative design solutions like their Tinctorial Textiles (2013), now available to order via the Ecological Textiles webshop, but originally produced for interior designers Van Eijk & Van der Lubbe as an installation at the renewed spaces of the ABN Amro bank office in Eindhoven.

Index, 2012

Chromatology, 2015

The starting point for The Fans, Raw Color explain, was the combination of colour and its physical quality with the element of motion and its dynamic nature. Electric fans were chosen as a tool to unite these properties. The group selected a trio of paper-shredders that reacts in response to visitors’ movements, creating a colourful paper trail for Chromatology (2015), which references Vincent van Gogh’s experimental colour mixing, and is also included in Raw Color – Blend, along with Index (2012), a collection of towels and blankets they designed that breaks down the graduations of tone in coloured, woven textiles.

A forum for experimental, contemporary design ideas, The Aram Gallery will also debut three new projects currently being developed by the group.

All images courtesy The Aram Gallery

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… A great many of the people wore sports clothes which were not really sports clothes. Their sweaters, knickers, slacks, blue flannel jackets with brass buttons were fancy dress. The fat lady in the yachting cap was going shopping, not boating; the man in the Norfolk jacket and Tyrolean hat was returning, not from a mountain, but an insurance office; and the girl in slacks and sneaks with a bandanna around her head had just left a switchboard, not a tennis court.
– The Day of the Locust, Nathaneal West, 1939

Tell us what you thinkThe Blog is about art, architecture, books, design and gardens, and anything else that currently interests us that we think might interest you

The Blog’s publishers insist that all images supplied for publication in our posts are cleared for that use before being sent to us. Whether pictures are sent to us as email attachments or made available as downloadable files, any responsibility for fees that may, under any circumstances whatsoever, fall due, must be borne by the source supplier